A new Stanford Study shows that virtual reality can make people more empathetic. Learners who underwent a short virtual reality (VR) experience, “Becoming Homeless,” became more empathetic toward the homeless to the point of taking action on their behalf. VR proved more effective in changing pro-social behaviors than reading or
Archive for July, 2020
Adapting to COVID-19 with Immersive Case-Based Learning
Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASAs, are vital to the wellbeing of children in the child welfare system. Their volunteer training program is crucial to their ability to help support and advocate for children. This year, Texas CASA had a critical training challenge: Move face-to-face training to a self-paced online learning
How We Learn: We Live In Stories
We remember stories. Most of our experience, our knowledge and our thinking is organized as stories. We live in stories. When we hear a story we compare it to what we already have in memory, and note the similarities or differences. This allows us to index and understand new information
How We Learn: We Remember Emotions
So what do people remember? We remember emotions, our feelings, and the behavior of others. Research shows that emotions are important to learning. “Emotions form a critical piece of how, what, when, and why people think, remember, and learn,” says Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD, associate professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience
How We Learn: Context Changes Perspective
Placing facts in context makes them more important to the learner. It gives the content relevance. Context lets learners connect concepts, and relate them to their own real world experiences, making it “easier to translate to the workplace” according to Nigel Paine, corporate learning expert and author of the The
How We Learn: The Brain Likes Patterns
The brain looks for patterns and fills in the blanks. It uses patterns to understand the relationship between things—putting them in context. “The human brain is a pattern-recognition machine. It evolved to identify related events or artifacts and connect them into a meaningful whole,” According to the NOVA article The
COVID-19 Makes Training & ReTraining More Urgent
The COVID-19 pandemic has made the issue of training and retraining urgent rather than just a future necessity. In 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that up to 375 million workers—or 14 percent of the global workforce—would have to switch occupations or acquire new skills by 2030 because of automation and
How We Learn: We Are Good At Forgetting
We are good at forgetting, sometimes forgetting 60-70% within one day of a learning event. So dumping a lot of information on learners is a bad idea. This is the big challenge of one-time learning events, where we separate work from learning. Forgetting does have a purpose, it eliminates unnecessary